Amidst all the conjecture and speculation kicked up in front of Thursday’s MLS super draft, I wish to register … a complaint.
One of the many wonderful things about soccer writing is, normally, you don’t have to deal with drafts.
This bizarre concept – where a group of teams conspire together to deeply and artificially limit the employment rights of incoming talent – is something North American sports fans all grew up with, and rarely question.
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In the rest of the world, drafts are … illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, unconscionable, unforgiveable, inconceivable, idiotic, laughable, bizarre, wrong, stupid, pathetic – I could fill the page if I didn’t have a children’s music show to play in just over an hour.
Throughout the soccer world (except MLS) players are free agents until they sign a contract with the best team that’s interested in them. Yes, their rights can be sold once they’re under contract, but no one can come to their door and say “you can only play for Irkutsk Ironmonger FC because they drafted you.”
I have often been called on to explain this bizarre suspension of human rights to my colleague and friend Nigel Reed over at CBC, who summed up his own confusion on the subject very neatly in his most recent blog. I always end up stressing that while I do not defend this mockery, it has a deep and shameful place in the sporting realities of this part of the globe.
The worst, by far, are junior hockey drafts. Boys in their early to mid-teens get yanked away from their families and friends, forced to start over hundreds of miles from home because the Swift Current Broncos or Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds need depth on the blue line.
I ask any fan who wants to defend drafting how you would feel if you were only allowed to work – even negotiate! – with only one company in your chosen field, and they’ve set up shop five provinces over.
Collectively, we don’t stand for this. That’s a big part of what labour unions are for. Ironically, the only reason sports drafts stand up in court is that some union agreed to them in collective bargaining.
The thing I would most like to see on draft day – aside from Adrian Serioux pulling on a Toronto FC jersey – is the entire drafted class calling a mass press conference on the steps of the United States supreme court, declaring themselves free agents.
The ironic thing? They are. Regardless of who drafts whom, the players are still completely free to make deals with any team in any other soccer league. But if a kid from central Ohio is good enough to play for the defending MLS-champion Columbus Crew and hopeless Colorado drafts him? Might as well go to Europe. What the heck?
Anyhow, I know I’m in the profound minority here. Drafts are real and entrenched, and aren’t going away just because they are totalitarian communism. I just thought I’d get a quick little rant in before the human rights of a whole bunch of pretty decent NCAA soccer players get shredded tomorrow in St. Louis.
Enjoy – and call me when it’s over.
Onward!